A thing or two.

Archive for July, 2012

Horses huddling together in a deluge of rain and hail. Someday, I will have the energy to use my “real” camera again. Instagram will have to do for now.

We’ve been in this house for a little over a month, but very few—if any—of those days have felt normal. In my last little house, there were many times where normal felt too quiet, too ordered. All of the pictures were hung, but I rehung them anyway. I moved the couch. I moved it back. I passed through the rooms, looking for something to change to make life seem less still.

Life now is anything but still. It’s unsettling, of course, in the most literal sense; my things, which once were so meticulously curated, are scattered here and there, crushed into boxes and piled into corners. It’s hard to remember now that stillness used to feel as unsettling as this unsettledness.

Things are falling into place—they always do. There is so much to be grateful for in this shifting life.

After six years in a (very small) one story home, the second floor here feels quite luxurious. I like sitting on the stairs. Maybe it’s the novelty of the new carpet—which, thanks be, arrived two weeks ahead of schedule, allowing us to get on with the seemingly endless stages of assembly and unpacking.

I never thought I’d want to live in a house younger than I am. I never thought I’d be so excited about the unrolling of so many yards of carpet. Newer homes and carpeted floors seem like a challenge to the aesthetic that I’ve developed—of vintage ceramic deer and miscellaneous estate sale furniture.

If you look closely in the picture above, you can see one of the deer. An old mirror that I painted pink has been rehomed from my entryway in Madison. Other things are starting to fall into place.

There are still a lot of boxes and I’ve been getting dressed out of a pile of clothing on the floor. At least the floor is clean, and the carpeting is new.

(unboxing and randomly throwing all the breakable things up on the mantle, hoping, implausibly, that this height will protect them from the cats)

When I need to sign in to WordPress again—after a prolonged hiatus—it feels much the same as when my Word documents become locked after similar periods of inactivity.

To call this a period of inactivity would be a bit misleading. The end of the semester, our wedding, buying a house, selling another house, honeymooning in Canada for two weeks, moving out and moving in—it’s been quite a stretch.

The garage is still filled with boxes and I’m about to head out to Home Depot (again, again) to buy some parts for a bathtub faucet, but we’re here. And maybe now I’ll be here—in virtual space— a little more.